About Dan McCarthy

Dan McCarthy’s cartoonish oil and acrylic paintings explore subjects such as mountains, birds, rainbows, fish, and scantily clad men and women with surfboards, skateboards, and guitars, rendered in a simple, two-dimensional style. He typically paints figures in thin pastel-colored washes on white canvases, sometimes allowing drips to run down the canvas. Images such as Deckhand (#11) (2003), in which a halo-like rainbow surrounds a young man in bathing briefs, are thought to be based on Catholic iconography, and in other paintings figures hold up their hands and arms in gestures reminiscent of Christ. McCarthy also produces word-pictures that spell out text, such as Strange Town (2013), an acrylic painting on marbleized gesso, in which the artist has crudely scrawled, “THE JAM” and “THE STRANGLERS.”